Introduction

The following essay provides an insight into police incidents using a variety of data visualisation techniques. Insights into police incidents are of vital importance due to the immense power and responsibility given to police to act in service of the community to ensure safety and to make sure they have done so lawfully. Therefore this essay first considers the role of gender in policing, moving onto years of experience, race and then a generalised annual performance review.

Data Description

The original data set used consists of 2384 different police incidents where use of force was required with detailed information regarding the incident. Examples of the information included about the incidents are the date, time, details about the officer including race, gender and injuries, details of the subject such as race, gender, the use of force against them, injuries and arrest status. The data frame also included geographic information including street addresses as well as coordinates for the use of force incident.

After initial data cleaning as well as removal of null values and missing values we were left with a data set containing information about 1864 police use of force incidents with 25 variables being explored.

The main objective of this essay is to conduct a thorough and full investigation into the use of force incidents from the Dallas Texas police force in 2016 as well as carrying out an in-depth data exploration of the subjects of interest. Firstly, the analysis will focus on exploring the foundation of the police force including race and gender of police officers as well as the subjects of interest. Further analysis will include where the incidents have occurred. Research into police conduct across the globe is of vital importance to identify and mitigate potential misconduct and racial or gender biases that may exist. This essay hopes to be a successful contribution to the discussion of social justice and police use of force.

Gender in Policing

Table to show Use of Force Incident Counts by Officer Gender and Subject Gender
Officer Gender Subject Gender Incident Counts
Female Female 59
Female Male 133
Male Female 288
Male Male 1384

When considering the use of force by police officers, it is vital to look at one of the most significantly recognised factors and its impact on policing behaviour. Gender of both police officer and suspects has been shown to highly influence the use of force incidents from officers. Studies conducted into this line of questioning consistently found that female officers use less force and receive fewer complaints than male officers (Sandifer L. M., 2006). Table 1. highlights the number of uses of force cases by police officer gender per suspect gender. The table points out that male suspects have a larger number of incidents where police use force in comparison to females. Both male and female officers have higher counts of using force against males. In 2016, female officers had twice the incident counts with males (133) than female subjects (59). On the other hand, male officers were almost 5 times more likely to use force against male subjects (1384) than female subjects (288).

The findings presented in table 1 points towards some gender biases with male suspects being more likely to be victims of police use of force incidents perhaps because they could be perceived as a higher threat as found by Plant and colleagues (2011). The table is also suggestive of female officers using verbal tactics dealing with potential suspects than male officers. This further confirmed by figure 1, a pie chart showing the officer gender distribution in use of force incidents. Male officers make up 89.7% of all incidents in Dallas Texas in 2016 whereas female officers only made up 10.3%. This is further suggestive of female officers perhaps using other tactics when dealing with suspects, hence having more female officers on the police force, or using them to train the police department could potentially help to lower the number use of force incidents.

Looking further into injuries sustained by officers during the use of force incidents heat map data shows that both male and female officers were not injured in the majority of the incidents. However, the heat map also suggests that of the officers sustaining an injury after an incident altercation, female officers were injured more than male officers. There are many assumptions to be made as to why this is the case besides physical structure such as internal biases. For instance, female officers being seen as less authoritative than male officers causing suspects to be more resistant and aggressive towards them. Alternatively, this could be due to differences in training and years of experience on the police force which may lead to issues in their ability to handle dangerous altercations. Experience is an important factor which we will explore further in the next section.

Years of Experience in Policing

Following on from the previous hypothesis, factoring in the years of experience an officer has in comparison to likelihood of injury. The data confirms this, as seen in figure 3. a box plot showing the years served on the police force by gender. Female officers have overall had fewer years’ experience than male officers with an interquartile range of 3 to 9 years served on the police force for females where as males were between 4 - 10 years. The box plot also highlighted the median years served for females was 3 in comparison to 6 years for males. Therefore, the reason female officers are more likely to be injured in an altercation may be because of the lack of experience. When looking at previous studies, Alpert and colleagues (1999) found that officers with more experience were less likely to use force in situations where it was not necessary.

However, in the case of the Dallas Texas police department we have confirmed female officers used less force combined with the confirmation they are on average more inexperienced than their male colleagues. This suggests that gender may be a better measure for the likelihood of use of force than years of experience. Maguire and colleagues (2017) also confirmed this theory, suggesting that although years of experience was not a significant predictor of the use of force by police officers, those who had previously used force been more likely to use it again in the future.

Despite placing less value on years of experience to gender. Figure 4 shows an interesting relationship between years of experience and number of incidents that occur. The majority of use of force incidents that happened during 2016 by the Dallas, Texas police force were carried out by police officers with fewer years’ experience on the force. There is a significant drop in frequency of incidents after having ten years of experience on the force. This provides evidence for Alpert and colleagues (1999) research mentioned previously. Officers with more experience are less likely to use force where it was not necessary. Considering this, perhaps years of experience is a valid measurement when analysed alone but not when considered with other factors. A possible assumption for why this pattern occurs could be due to the fact younger officers want to make a significant impression early on in their career, so they tend to take on tasks that they are less equipped to handle resulting in requiring a higher use of force. Referring back to Maguire and colleagues’ (2017) study, they highlighted those who had previously used force would be more likely to use it again in the future. Therefore an important graph useful to mitigate future use of force incidents would be the interactive dot plot (figure 5).

Aligned with the findings of figure 4, figure 5 shows that police officers with less experience had higher incident counts than those officers with more experience. The plot looks simple at first glance with number of incidents and officer’s years on the force on the axis. However, aach point on the dot plot was calculated using the ‘Indvidual Incident Ratio’ equation.

Equation 1: Individual Incident Ratio \[\begin{align*} Incident Ratio = \frac {No. of Incidents}{Years on Force} \end{align*}\]

Only officers with a ratio of more than 3 incidents per year served on the force have been plotted. The dots refers to a specific uniformed officer (labelled by badge number) with an individual incident ratio of more than three per year served. The darker the plot point the higher the ratio of incidents to years on the force.This plot is of significant importance as it easily highlights the officers who have had a staggeringly higher number of incidents for their years on the force. Perhaps the officers badge number (found when hovering over the dot point), can help identify those who may need further retraining or assistance in conflict training.

Another factor which is being considered more often now is race, both race of the officer and the suspect have unfortunately shown to have an influence regarding the officer’s use of force incidents. Figure 5 is a violin plot which shows the years of experience on the force alongside the race of officers. The violin plot highlights that officer with more than 20 years’ experience are only of the races American Indian, Black, Hispanic, and White. From the data set there are no Asian officers who document a use of force incident with more than 20 years’ experience. The data also shows that significantly more individuals from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups are being recruited by the police force as they have fewer years’ experience. American Indians are the only ethnic minority which does not follow the pattern as there are no use of force incidents by any officers with less than 4 years’ experience.

Race in Policing

Figure 7, the pie chart showing injuries by race shows that of all injuries sustained during use of force, over fifty percent were sustained by Black individuals. The second highest group with more than a quarter of total injuries sustained was by those belonging to the white racial category. The pie chart shows significant racial bias with a higher level of force being used on those of black race. This is an increasingly concerning pie chart as it shows evidence for racial bias.

Upon further analysis into subject injuries by race, the graph below highlights that the figure 7 pie chart can actually be quite misleading. Although the pie chart is suggesting a higher use of force against Black individuals comparative to other race. However, figure 8, a more detailed examination using a facet graph takes into account the total number of incidents per each race which was able to uncover the opposite.

According to the facet graph showing the distribution of subject injury by race, when accounting for the total number of incidents per race it shows that actually White and Hispanic races were more likely to sustain injuries as a result of police use of force. Hence, the facet graph races awareness on the importance of employing more comprehensive methods of analysis to gain a better and more wholistic understanding of data sets of an increasingly sensitive topic.

Annual policing performance

Exploring deeper into annual policing performance this essay will look at performance by district and any racial biases by district. An important statistic is the consideration of arrests and releases after a use of force incident. Police have a significant power and duty to protect citizens, hence the use of force should be used as a last resort to arrest an individual. Figure 9. shows the police district vs. the race of the suspects, each point is colour coded for a colorblind individual with yellow representative of individuals arrested and black to represented those released after the incident. Figure 9 shows that every single district apart from district 1 and district 13, show obvious bias towards using force against the black race pointing towards a targeted use of force.

Throughout the year, the number of use of force incidents continued to decrease as shown in figure 10. However, there is an increase in incidents that occur after July. The New York Times reported in 2016 there was a brutal and unfortunate attack on police which caused five police officers lost their lives as a result of a gunman (Fernandez et al., 2016). The gunman had a vendetta and set out specifically to kill as many white officers as possible in response to racial bias within the American police force. Therefore, this unfortunate event can explain the reason behind the increase in use of force incidents as tensions were higher post the event.

Use of force by police should only be used minimally and when necessary, hence it would be safe to assume that in cases where the subject in question is not arrested, use of force is likely to have been preventable. Following this assumption, this essay pursues geographic analysis to specifically locate the cases where use of force incidents did not result in the suspect being arrested. From the 1864 cases of police use of force incidents, suspects from 243 of the cases were not arrested. Further analysis was conducted to understand the geographical placement of these 243 cases. Each of the points on the map are labelled by date of the incident, suspect description and the type of injury the suspect obtained.

Reference List

Alpert, G. P., & Dunham, R. G. (2004). Understanding police use of force: Officers, suspects, and reciprocity. Cambridge University Press.

Fernandez, M., Pérez-peña, R., & Bromwich, J. E. (2016, July 8). Five Dallas officers were killed as Payback, police chief says. The New York Times. The New York Times. Retrieved April 25, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/dallas-police-shooting.html

Maguire, E. R., Nix, J., & Campbell, B. A. (2017). A war on cops? The effects of Ferguson on the number of US police officers murdered in the line of duty. Justice quarterly, 34(5), 739-758.

Plant, E. A., Goplen, J., & Kunstman, J. W. (2011). Selective responses to threat: The roles of race and gender in decisions to shoot. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(9), 1274-1281.

Sandifer, L. M. (2006). Police use of force: Does gender make a difference. The University of Texas at Arlington.